Geologist Iain Stewart in the Timna Mine, Israel in BBC2's How the Earth Made Us.

Geology may seem the slowest-moving of sciences but, as the chaos and misery in Haiti keeps reminding us, you can't take your eyes off it for a second. It was a small step from the news headlines to the timely first episode of BBC2's new series How Earth Made Us, which explained how one of the keystones of civilisation and our habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time were two sides of the same yawning chasm. As affable Scots professor Iain Stewart explained, much of human history was down to faultlines and the bargain struck by mankind with the churning inferno beneath our feet. He took a while to get around to earthquakes but you could sense one was coming even as he took us, by way of a preamble, down a Mexican mineshaft that plunged so deeply and hotly he had to wear a vest made from freezer packs to stop his organs from boiling in their bags. Here was a cavern of crystals the size of girders sprouting from mineral-rich water squeezed up through the rocks by forces so powerful they had to show us glowing rivers of jam to describe it. "This place tops it all," panted Iain in his gently adenoidal Malcolm Tucker accent, struggling out of his oxygen mask before he drowned in his own sweat.

Next stop, a desert near the Dead Sea 6,000 years ago where the faultline had brought malachite to the surface. Heat it up and you got copper, he said. Add tin (and another 1,000 years for someone to get round to thinking of it) and you had the Bronze Age! Soon the Minoans were lording it at the centre of the universe now known as Crete, fashioning axeheads and earrings and sending out their trading ships in search of tin as far afield as… well, the Tin Islands (or Britain, as we came to prefer it), perhaps leaving the cavemen there attractive garlands of goat bones for their trouble. The Minoans were a sophisticated people, said Iain, with art and a sewage system and a handsome stadium where charging bulls were leapt over for fun (a sport eventually finessed by the Spanish into something with more stabbing and blood). Other desert cities sprang up – Petra and Jericho, which exploited subterranean reservoirs formed by water damming up against impermeable faultlines, creating oases of fertile land. Of course no one knew about plate tectonics; they just thought their luck was in. And so it was, but the centuries flew by (indicated by rapidly scudding clouds) and earthquakes did for them all, the lofty Minoans swept away by a tsunami when their nearby volcanic island port (now picturesque Santorini) was blown sky high and sank beneath the waves. By then, though, the die was cast; metal was the future and the rest was history.

Relocation, Relocation (Channel 4) was back, with Gregor and Inyang from Glasgow eager to relocate to Cornwall and run their own bistro, though neither had experience of bistros or indeed Cornwall. Enter dreammakers Kirstie and Phil, who admired their spirit and were soon showing them an awful bungalow. "It's a bit of a warren," said Inyang, though her expression said something worse. Naturally, Kirstie and Phil had a nicer house up their sleeves but what was the rush with a whole hour to fill? They walked arm in arm, barefoot along the beach, joshing and flirting like a true-life couple. The sun shone; music played; he fooled with her hat; she ran laughing into the sea. You wondered if they might start looking for a place for themselves. Perhaps just for the afternoon.

You couldn't move for India last week on Channel 4, which had at least three shows with titles punning on Slumdog Millionaire. But it was Gordon Ramsay's Great Escape that left its bootprints across the schedules, as Britain's favourite Tourette's sufferer charged up and down the subcontinent learning how to make curry properly. There was an air of expectancy: India is a vast country but could it accommodate Gordon's monumental sense of himself? He was soon having a moan about the heat (what did he expect from Delhi – snowball fights?), or the way the trains lurched about when you were trying to chop onions, or taps that didn't work. And where was the clingfilm when you needed it? He was at his kow-towing politest when meeting wizened masters of the cuisine but more often he was a graceless lummox, effing it and showboating for the camera amid a dignified circle of smiling, uncertain villagers.

Oh, but Gordon is a star – an alpha trooper, chugging on an unreliable motorbike, trekking in the jungle with retired headhunters, pratfalling, eating things he wished he hadn't. But you never lost the sense of strings being pulled and itineraries ticked to get him through his prescribed wheezes and on to the screen with glory intact. The shows were less about the endless variety and complexity of Indian cooking than having Gordon crack it by the end of the day. He is a world-class act, of course: a swish wedding banquet (take two medium-sized goats…), esoteric street snacks, dinner for India's elite foodies, meat done in a hole in the ground, meat done in a leaf on the fire, all created amid a circus of snakes and buffaloes, accidents with machetes and lack of essential kitchenware. Ah, how adversity makes a miracle of genius! It was a belching swaggering feast of TV but the best of it was Gordon 40 feet up a tree being eaten by giant ants. "Fuck!" he squawked, though only in the way anyone would.

Cowboys in India was part of More 4's True Stories series, a dogged, sometimes beautiful, one-man film about tribal people preparing to fight – reportedly with bows and arrows! – a mining conglomerate that had built a factory on their sacred mountain. The company said they were bringing jobs, education and healthcare to the region; the locals were chopping down trees to stop their trucks.

Simon Chambers, behind the camera, brought a Louis Theroux-like presence to his subject. Sometimes he admitted he hadn't a clue what was happening – were his hired guide and driver just taking him for a ride? It was an honest, old-fashioned film that got nowhere fast but gathered an authentic sense of the people it laid eyes on. "We are just monkeys in the mountain for you," said one angry man, who felt he had been hoodwinked by the mining company into selling his land. "They promised everything. How could we not believe them?"

Geology at its grubbiest.

The slow show doesn't suit us, sir

These past weeks I've been mostly muttering about Paul Whitehouse squandering his talent on TV ads, but that was before I saw Bellamy's People (BBC2), an improvised comedy spun off by Whitehouse and Charlie Higson from their acclaimed hoax Radio 4 call-in programme Down the Line. The show now sees host Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) on the road with a camera crew, meeting fans and contributors with unhilarious results. It wasn't badly observed but dear me it was leaden, with the anodyne Bellamy running out of bewildered looks as he negotiated a series of overlong, less than funny encounters with a cast of misfits, buffers and sociopaths. The best laughs came from Whitehouse, whose ageing 60s pop impresario momentarily recalled the glory days of The Fast Show. Higson held the eye with one of his poignant old men, and Simon Day was good value for his reformed thug Tony, re-enacting an armed robbery with frightening zeal. But on the whole, mostly not brilliant.